For the best reading experience and viewing of illustrations, I recommend you use a computer!
Note to
reader:
My sole aim in writing this story is,
quite simply, to convey the lives of Paula and Ray as they have occurred. My hope
is that you will choose to join in on their journey and accompany them as they
attempt to uncover their bizarre pasts.
Thank you for reading, and welcome!
-Saidy
I:
The Black Bay
Drip.
Drip.
An awareness, if dull, of sensation.
Drip.
A cool tingling. Faded. Then again.
Drip.
Humid warmth.
Drip.
Prickling at the back of the throat.
He wanted to recede, back into the comfortable black. He
swallowed. The prickling worsened. He coughed, choked on something in the back
of his throat, and in an instant was wrenched into light:
He was awake.
His abdomen quivered and burned as he forced himself upright and
pressed his palms against concrete for stability. His lungs ached, and his neck
felt like brittle wood. He took quick, shallow breaths. The hard ground was
grey and dotted with yellowing leaves and torn palm fronds. The sky above him
was dark, imperial.
His thoughts quickened, escaped from soporific molasses, and then
all his sensations leapt from dull, confused neutrality into panic. A buzzing
crescendo so deep in his ears he felt it between his eyes, gripping his head
and seeming to hurtle it; his fingertips, reading every crack and dip in the
vast concrete, and how it changed, curved, spread away like roots.
Suddenly, a young feminine voice in the distance that extinguished the bedlam:
“Hello?”
A heavy silence. Distantly, an undulating droning—a pleasant
sound, familiar in such a way that felt like a very long time ago. His eyes
followed the sound carried on the wind to abundant trees that bent and kissed,
leaves skittering against each other.
He called again into the humid air, and a nearby rustling replied.
Sounds of fabric.
“Help me,” she coughed, “Help me.”
He grunted, fighting against his weight to stand, and pivoted in the direction of her voice. There, on the other side of the massive concrete structure, was a girl crouched on the ground. Her head was buried in her arms, and even from this distance he could see that she trembled.
On legs that buckled every couple of steps he staggered in her
direction. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
Her hands shifted, gripped the sides of her head.
“Where am
I?” she urged.
Ray surveyed rows and rows of old plastic seats fixed onto the
concrete. The entire structure was in a state of disrepair, coated in rotting
vegetation and the arching slopes of vibrant graffiti. It seemed to be some
sort of stadium, but the seats all angled not towards a field, but instead
watched bay of black water that lapped softly far down at the base of the
structure.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Then who are you?” she cried, lifting her face from her
arms.
Suddenly a blinding light that stabbed into Ray’s skull.
“Holy SHIT!” he shrieked, “Put your head down!”
She ducked her head, buried it again under her arms.
“What? What–what
happened?” she demanded. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” Her shoulders
shook, and her voice wavered. “Why can’t I see? I’m supposed to see.”
“Hold on,” he said gently. “Keep your eyes closed…but lift up your
head.”
Stiffly her head rose from her arms, and Ray gazed at the girl’s
face.
Behind the girl’s eyelids two suns burned. As though a light shone from within her
skull, the thin flesh covering her eyes was illuminated in a fiery orange, with
the soft blue of veins and capillaries meandering over in rivulets.
A pulsing violet disc burned in his field of vision where the light
had thrown knives into his head, but through it he could see she wore a white tank top that exposed bruised
and scratched arms, over which stringy dull purple hair fell in oily clumps. She was
pale and slim, and her lips continuously trembled as if caught between silence
and speech. Ray seated himself beside her and inhaled deeply.
Past the dark bay, he could see the warm lights of a city skyline.
A sluggish breeze dragged its arms through the air and pulled gentle
disturbances over the surface of the seawater.
“Okay,” he said softly. “What’s your name?”
“Paula.”
“My name is Ray,” he offered, and his mouth started to form the
next words, but too soon—he realized then that there was no more information to give.
He cleared his
throat and swallowed again. “I’m thinking we’re both a little confused about
how we got here, yeah?”
Paula was
quiet.
He sighed.
“Okay. Okay…” He scanned his surroundings once more, eyes pleading for
something to scream out to him any sort of familiarity.
“And you can’t see,” he said, “but you used to?”
“I think so. I—I don’t know,” she cried. A couple of moths flicked
themselves into the warm glow emanating from her eyelids, then fluttered back
off into the darkness.
“That’s okay. Alright. We’ll solve this.” He took another deep
breath. “I think we should look for help.”
Paula nodded. Her shoulders had steadied.
“Alright. I’m gonna grab you by the hand,” he said, “and we’re
gonna walk together.”
The way out of the stadium was littered with misshapen cans of
beer and pine branches, and twice Ray nearly fell as he guided Paula safely
through. While they exited on the other end, the gusts of wind were guttural,
as if protesting their entrance into the rest of the world. From this side, Ray
had a plain view of their surroundings and saw that they were on an island.
Cutting through its middle and seeming to run far to his left and right was a
busy road spotlit by intermittent street lamps. On his side of the road,
buildings, patches of woodland and thick mangrove. On the other, a beach with
empty parking lots.
Whizzing by on
the road before him were great smooth hunks of metal, now and again glaring at
him with harsh lights and protesting each other in blaring horns. They were
monstrous and horridly fast, spinning their own wind currents as they tore down
the asphalt. It occurred to Ray that these awful machines were called cars, and
at once within him there broke out a grave fear. His leg muscles tightened in a subconscious preparation for escape. Surely he could find help on his side of
the road and avoid plunging himself into the passage of beasts.
He stood on an
expanse of gravel and asphalt, at the far edge of which stood the concrete
stadium and the sea. On the other sides of the expanse were other, more
temporary structures, most of which had shabby white tarps for roofs, and some
of which appeared to be outhouses. Under one of the tarps stood a few men in
reflective vests, chatting and setting up equipment.
But as he came within earshot of the men, it was like an invisible
force had wedged itself between Ray and them, and he froze in place. Up until
this moment, his mind had been knotted to finding the nearest person and
pleading for help. But now, faced with people no more than fifty feet from
him—he couldn’t approach. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he felt he
had to hide his state of disarray for the sake of his own safety, and now the
idea of telling these men of their situation was repulsive to him.
“I don’t think we should ask for help,” Paula whispered to him,
and for a moment Ray wondered if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.
Ray’s head was
an overturned basket, objects and emotions strewn about in nonsense heaps, but
one thing he did feel with certainty, now, was that something about them
was quite different from other people, and that this was something they should
keep close to their chests. He felt like a thief, slinking under cover of
darkness so as not to have the girls’ unusual eyes seen by any other.
By one of the outhouses there was a water fountain. Ray led them
to it, helped Paula take long sips. After refreshing themselves, he scavenged
the littered ground for empty bottles. He picked up two soda bottles, rinsed
them to the best of his ability and filled them, then gave one to Paula to keep
for wherever they went.
He led them around the perimeter of the expanse, away from the
sparse overhead lights and away from the white tents. Here along the edge grew
great palm trees with tall, slender trunks and fronds spindly like fish bones.
They waded through grass that grew to their waists and now and then pierced
through their clothing.
As they
walked, Paula’s feet began to drag, and Ray centered himself on finding a safe
place for them to rest. Now having walked away from the road that carved
through the island, they were close again to the stadium, but all the discarded
bottles and spray-paint made him nervous about passerby; so he turned to the
right instead, led them past the gate of palm trees into a thick of mangrove
and pine, but only a few meters into it, so that still he could catch glimpses
of the stadium through the tangled branches and orient himself.
Eventually the
vegetation opened onto the shoreline. Here the breeze was cooler, the air fresh
and light and mildly salty, and Ray’s shoulders were less heavy. They seated
themselves on the coarse sand, backs against the wall of brush and faces
towards the black ocean. Paula’s eyes were still shut, soft light radiating
from within.
“We should be
safe here for a little bit,” he said. “I don’t see anyone, at least.”
Paula nodded
faintly and reclined, resting her head on the sand. The skin under her eyes was
puffy and irritated, and her lips still trembled, but her breathing had evened
under the cape of sleep.
Ray, on the
other hand, was wired. His muscles seemed to pulse with every heartbeat, and
his eyes refused to focus on any one object. He wondered how much longer Paula
had been awake in the dilapidated stadium, calling out for help. A part of him
wanted to take advantage of his energy and see what else the island had to
offer, but a larger part refused to leave her side lest anybody come. So
throughout the remaining hours of the night, he retreated into his own thoughts
as he dug his fingers into the sand and watched the tide wander its way out.
